Theodore Beale, racist asshat (and not embarrassed by it)

…the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent of the vote.

It was clear who she was talking about: flaming hatemonger and regressive thug Theodore Beale, who also goes by the name Vox Day. Not a good person, a really nasty, unstable, vicious wackaloon. And of course, Vox Day noticed and flew into a furious snit, demanding apologies and threatening lawsuits, because he’s so annoyed at being called a racist.

Reality isn’t racist, Mr. Sanford. Neither is history. They simply are. And you can’t escape the fact that Ms Jemisin lied about me and about the state laws of Texas and Florida. As some of my Australian readers have already pointed out, Ms Jemisin has no idea what she’s talking about concerning Australian race relations either.

Oh, that doesn’t sound so angry or racist, you may be thinking. But what you’re seeing there is the stripped-down, cleaned-up version of his original racist rant, probably revised when he realized that threatening lawsuits for being called a racist while flinging racist insults was probably not a wise idea.

So, perhaps their assertions should be taken with at least a small grain of salt. And it should be obvious that, being a libertarian, I am not actively attempting to take away anyone’s “most basic rights”. Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious reason that she is not.

She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too. The laws are not there to let whites “just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence,” those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend themselves by shooting people, like her, who are savages engaged in attacking white people.

Keep in mind that Jemisin is black. Here’s Theodore Beale coming right out and saying that while she’s human, she’s not fully equal to a white man, himself (and please, his invocation of “genetic science” is reeking bullshit). And then he says that the racist “stand your ground” laws some states have in place are there to protect white people like him from savages like her.

Or how about this?

Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support.

Racist as hell.

Hmm. Why do you think he felt it necessary to cut that kind of racist noise out of his post?

Comments

Please note that in the election Beale lost, by a 90:10 margin, only about 30% of the membership voted.

So his constituency was around 3% of an organization with around 1500 members. I’m not too surprised to find that percentage of racist bampots in any mostly-American organization; if anything the proportion is hearteningly low.

There’s also the fact that not only did Beale write a racist and sexist rant against Jemisin, he also used a unmoderated SFWA twitter — intended for authors to promote useful things to other SFWA members — to make sure everyone saw his rant. So, even if Beale wanted to argue that his harassment of Jemisin was private and none of the SFWA’s business, that doesn’t hold water given that he deliberately used SFWA’s resources to make sure a wide an audience as possible saw it.

While I don’t object to tossing out someone who openly says that other members and potential members are savages and not equally human, I would give an extra push to someone who does that AND uses the organization’s membership tools to make sure the targeted people see it.

It’s nice to see that Beale thought it necessary to tone it down, even though it’s futile since the internet never forgets.

Regarding expulsion, that’s SFWA’s business. But I wouldn’t go around saying that Scalzi and Stross are anything like Beale, even though they’re also SFWA members. AFAIK, the qualifier is being published in science fiction, not being a racist jerk.

But isn’t he the intertubes super-duper genius intellect? Didn’t he invent a 64 button-mouse, which is 63 buttons better than that loser Steve Jobs was ever able to build? Look at how smart he is, he quotes latin in the subtitle of his blogspot blog. For fuck’s sake latin! And he had had a mildly popular techno song twenty years ago. I mean techno is known for being the most musically complex genera out there, besides every other genera. How can this, God among men, be wrong? For fuck’s sake, he speaks elvish!!1!

Please note that in the election Beale lost, by a 90:10 margin, only about 30% of the membership voted.

So his constituency was around 3% of an organization with around 1500 members.

I think your assumption that every shithead in the SFWA voted and voted for Beale is not very reasonable. It is much more reasonable to assume that the shithead quotient of voters is not significantly different than that of the organization at large. Not to mention the fact that there are probably at least a few shitheads who didn’t vote for Beale because he was an asshole joke candidate.

I just posted this in the lounge the other day on racial bias in stand your ground laws. Black woman shoots in self-defense, means to hit ceiling above the guy to scare him, hits him on accident but doesn’t kill him, he admits he was about to beat her up and she had every right to be scared and do that. White man walks in on his wife and her boyfriend, who he has known about for some time, and shoots the guy three times until he is good and dead, and claims stand your ground even though nobody was in danger of anything and he knew it.

I think Theodore Beale may have just defined a new low for racist arsehats everywhere – it is almost impressive that he has such a capacity for mindless, reactionary hatred. I am sure lesser bigoted jerks everywhere look upon him with awe.

Holytape @ 8;

But isn’t he the intertubes super-duper genius intellect? Didn’t he invent a 64 button-mouse, which is 63 buttons better than that loser Steve Jobs was ever able to build? Look at how smart he is, he quotes latin in the subtitle of his blogspot blog. For fuck’s sake latin! And he had had a mildly popular techno song twenty years ago. I mean techno is known for being the most musically complex genera out there, besides every other genera. How can this, God among men, be wrong? For fuck’s sake, he speaks elvish!!1!

And a shiny new internets for you, methinks!

That said, my keyboard has a bone to pick with you – it didn’t want the unsolicted bath it just received… ;-)

We could equally well assume that the 70% who didn’t vote were all racist dorks who were too stupid to find the ballot and send it in. So all we know is that the percentage of racists in the SFWA is somewhere between 3% and 73%, with 10% measured in one sample. It probably lies closer to 10 than to either of the extremes.

He didn’t assume everyone voted, he states 30% did, he generously assumed all racists voted thus capping them at 3% its’s quite likely it’s higher because some assholes voted against him on literary grounds, or didn’t vote

10% of the 30% that voted are the minimum number of shit stains. number is likely higher

I love the myth that technology is one progressive ladder. not like we didn’t get major civilizations that missed simple techs or platued due to missing key innovations or resource deficiencies. the chinese where never most advanced in the world but got lapped because they didn’t develop glassware needed for chemistry. the incans never built and empite without discovering the wheel. Africans weren’t taken as slaves because of their agricultural expertise, Iroquois never developed representational government independent of the greek, Europe never stalled until they rediscovered Roman and Greek knowledge

Oh Vox Day. Anytime I want to be embarrassed to share a race with someone, all I have to do is be told about something he said.

Funny story about a sad little shit: Many years ago, we got into an online argument over, of all things, whether or not Wing Commander had a score board (which he felt was proof that men don’t oppress women using technology, long story). I started to read him in the aftermath of his cronies showing up at my blog to threaten me. At the time, his girlfriend’s online nym had ‘bunny’ or something of the kind in it. After encouraging his cronies to take a shit on myself and a friend for being female (also for working in the sex biz and being queer), his girlfriend made a comment about it on his blog.

His slime patch was quick to tell her what to do about having an opinion online (kitchen, make sandwiches, shut up and take it, etc), even though she was agreeing with them. Beale had to wade in and tell the idiots he’d cultivated that they couldn’t tell his woman what to do, but only because she belonged to him. After all, he was the only one who could tell her what to do. (The fun part was that he began, if memory serves, by whining that they were being mean to his girlfriend.)

The tl;dr version: he’s a shameless, SHAMELESS hypocrite, and bleating out things vaguely associated with Greek society appears to be his only way to console himself for being an utterly disingenuous failure of a human being. His big contribution to the world, or so he appears to believe, is being born white and with a cock.

Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens)

Indeed. According to genetic science, non-Africans have significant admixture from archaic Sapiens species (Neanderthals, Denisovans, and probably others waiting to be identified), making them *less* “Sapiens Sapiens”.

That’s what he meant, right? :)

(and yes, I know that some African groups also have admixture from African archaics. I just couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious whole-leg-in-mouth moment)

There is no one I would like to do physical violence to based on what they write on the internet.

Teddy Beale makes me almost want to reconsider that policy. There is something….spectacularly unpleasant about him. He strikes me as someone who is just itching for a really thorough arse kicking. I think it would actual count as a medical intervention and possibly do him a lot of good.

I am not proud of these thoughts, but like history and reality, they just are. ;-)

Well, as long as what he means by “alpha” is the version that is normally kept in-house and not suitable for release, I don’t see a big problem. Regrettably, it seems QC policy may have been violated.

I hope when they kick him out that it can be done in approximation of old military custom – march him onto the parade ground, rip off his stripes and cut off his buttons, and leave him totally disgraced. Then perhaps a break with custom, to ward off the highly predicable martyr’s response: pat him on his shit-filled head and give him a lolly to make him feel better. Maybe even give him a hanky for his wee tears.

Oh, Vox Day. An endless source of amusement mixed with self-loathing brought on by sharing a genus with this dope.

His history is equal parts interesting and revealing, especially in light of many of his, erm, opinions. I suggest anyone not familiar with Theodore Beale read up on him, but the TL;dr version is thus: daddy was a crazy tax protestor who fled when the Feds wised up to his idiocy. And who exposed daddy Beale and helped the IRS bring him to justice? Why, none other than mommy Beale!

I see that bad news travels. I was going to email PZ on this one, since this burning paper bag full of dog product ended up on the SFWA’s doorstep so quickly that I thought he might miss it.

After reading the quoted material from Beale’s screed, I have to wonder how long it’ll take incoming president Steven Gould to resurrect the SFWA’s reputation because of this and the editorial mess involving the Bulletin (i.e., the Mike Resnick/Barry Malzberg debacle, among recent others). Talk about jobs nobody in their right mind would want…

I see that bad news travels fast. I was going to email PZ on this one, since this burning paper bag full of dog product ended up on the SFWA’s doorstep so quickly that I thought he might miss it.

After reading the quoted material from Beale’s screed, I have to wonder how long it’ll take incoming president Steven Gould to resurrect the SFWA’s reputation because of this and the editorial mess involving the Bulletin (i.e., the Mike Resnick/Barry Malzberg debacle, among recent others). Talk about jobs nobody in their right mind would want…

As to Daz’s referencing of the Foz Meadows piece: let me point out that re-reading Beale’s screed there convinces me that he is as much of an irredeemable asshole (if not more) as previously advertised.

Ok, I am a little bit out of the loop, so help me out. Is this the guy who used to go around to atheist forums pretending to be an atheist, but “a better class of atheist”? The guy who justified his trolling of atheists by claiming that he wanted to push back against atheists who are “bigoted against certain ideas”? The guy whose main argument tactic was to reply to any disagreement with, “No, dumb dumb.” Is this the guy who pretended to be an expert in physics who described the big bang theory as “materialist mythology?”

I grind it to the consistency of flour; it’s better on popcorn that way.

I don’t even have any table salt in my house anymore. I buy the chunky kind and have a nice little mortar and pestle that I keep on the dining table to grind up and use. Some times I with I had some pre-ground just to use for random stuff, but for the most part I love it this way. I often toss in some dried rosemary or thyme to the mortar for flavor.

The bloody spam filter has nixed my every attempt to post the picture of this guy holding a flaming sword at erection angle. Let the record show that such a photo exists, and can be viewed with minimal g**gle-fu.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

around 3% of an organization with around 1500 members. I’m not too surprised to find that percentage of racist bampots in any mostly-American organization; if anything the proportion is hearteningly low.

Around 3% think they want as their representative a man that insists 3 of my 5 best friends are savages, and that the law needs to contain provisions to safely shoot them to death if he gets the willies.

I am sooooooooo heartened. Thanks so much, Charles, for your sagacious and reasonable perspective. I would have hated for the conversation to get shrill.

You know, Louis, I have the same urge. I really, REALLY want to pop him in the mouth, and then I think about what a sad little sack he is. What can you say about someone who insists on rendering all parts of their life down to the least impressive and least admirable, but doesn’t realize they are?

I understand you’re trying to defend an organisation you belong to and believe in (as I do), but that was a terrible statistical argument. You could have claimed that Beale’s constituency was as low as 3%, but by the same logic, it could be as high as 73%. Obviously neither answer is very likely.

If you use good statistical technique (and you don’t need to be a stats guru, you can use an online calculator like this one). With the usual 95% confidence intervals, you get an overall support for Beale of 7.23% to 12.77% among SFWA members. Even if you use the ridiculously conservative 99.9% confidence level, the range is 5.35% to 14.65%.

Even at the low end, it’s pretty dismaying. And while one could argue that the more racist/misogynist bloc in the SFWA turned out to vote in numbers, why didn’t the non-racist/misogynist bloc also turn out in numbers to oppose this awful nomination? If I were an SFWA member, only death or a coma would have stopped me voting against Beale.

I believe he (Teddy) is also known as the “narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit” I always sing-song that to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. I tried to come up with a few more “alternate” lines to sing with it, but I fail hard at poetry and/or song writing.

I believe he (Teddy) is also known as the “narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit” I always sing-song that to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. I tried to come up with a few more “alternate” lines to sing with it, but I fail hard at poetry and/or song writing.

Narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit
bothering to talk with him’s like swimming in a tar pit
when it comes to decency he doesn’t have the toolkit
narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit!

I’m still amazed people like this both exist and can manage to tie their own shoes without getting their fingers caught in the knot.

And what a set of knots it is. I followed the RationalWiki link to Evangelical Realism and read the post about VD’s attempt to refute the problem of evil…which he does (or tries to) by flatly contradicting all of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam vis-a-vis the attributes of Yahweh!

Seriously, he basically says “God knows a lot and is super-powerful, but isn’t omniscient or omnipotent, and anyway omni* is a potential, not an actuality.” Aside from the big fat [citation needed] that springs, and aside from this flying in the face of every movement not called “Open Theology,” it doesn’t distinguish God from another being who knows a lot and is very powerful: Satan

I have to wonder if that’s a coincidence. Yahweh, as modern Christians have him, is the very devil himself. And people wonder why I’m scared to leave the house…

We did see a large uptick in election turnout. We also saw very few (zero to one, depending on how you take it) sarcastic votes in the presidential race, and usually there’s a smattering.

The assumption that the 10% are people who actually support Beale’s policies is where I differ from the statistical analysis. Not all of our members are active on the internet. Some will have only read his campaign platform; some will have voted for Beale without even looking at the platform simply because they were voting against Steve Gould (who was seen as Scalzi’s pick).

The 10% number is interesting but doesn’t starkly mean what it appears to mean. 10% of the organization either support his views, don’t support them but also don’t feel that the views are sufficient to prevent voting for him, or have low information about them. I don’t know what the proportions are and it’s pointless to guess.

In one way, it doesn’t matter because — 10%. It’s still the figure that wields power and will use it that way.

On the other hand, if we’re going to be talking about absolute numbers of “shitstains” — you can’t easily draw identical conclusions about the characters of groups going in with different levels of motive and information.

I think the general point is more important than the number anyway. These views are apparently not outside the Overton window of modern American discourse (or discourse in sf/f).

And what a set of knots it is. I followed the RationalWiki link to Evangelical Realism and read the post about VD’s attempt to refute the problem of evil…which he does (or tries to) by flatly contradicting all of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam vis-a-vis the attributes of Yahweh!

As someone who downloaded Vox Day’s Irrational Atheist and read through the first quarter of it before realizing I didn’t really give a fuck, and as someone who went on to follow Deacon Duncan’s takedowns of that same book shortly after, and that last God As Game Designer argument…that was Vox at his finest. As in, his most amoral and disingenuous. I also liked the part where he explained away omniscience by comparing it to owning a book instead of using it to look something up. Knowledge works in mysterious ways!

Chris, that was a thing of beauty and a joy t o behold. The second I have some disposable income (soon, fucking hell let it be soon) I’m going to click the “Donate” button at Coyote Crossing and remuneration shall be yours.

Don’t worry, I followed it. Is it weird some part of me still thinks one of these slimeballs will have a convincing argument at some point? I really don’t want to spend my life reading every single argument every single believer makes, and am condensing them down to categories to save time, but ugh…

Is it just that the internet exposes more idiocy, or are there more idiots than there used to be? I’m scared to share a planet with these loons; every day feels more and more like I’ve wandered into a trap.

Also, wow, “God as Game Designer?” Well we’d better hope Yahweh never talks to the sick son of a bitch who programmed Demonophobia…though according to almost all believers, Yahweh outdoes said sick fuck by, well, infinity.

“God knows a lot and is super-powerful, but isn’t omniscient or omnipotent, and anyway omni* is a potential, not an actuality.”

I wrote a super cool* essay in high school called God in a Box, about DJing (which I thought was super awesome), and how a good DJ had to be omniscient, omnipresent, and amazing to control the dancing hordes. And a good DJ could be those things. And you could make people dance. And dance, and dance. Like a God.
*I totes thought it was a super cool essay. Haven’t seen it in a decade. I’m sure it is crap.

Is it weird some part of me still thinks one of these slimeballs will have a convincing argument at some point? I really don’t want to spend my life reading every single argument every single believer makes, and am condensing them down to categories to save time, but ugh…

It’s not that weird to hold for the possibility. But don’t push yourself to hunt down these arguments. The good arguments for religions should rise to the top. They should be readily available in the religious meme pool. If they really justify religious belief and aren’t just post-hoc rationalizations, they should be arguments that most religious believers can articulate and are familiar with, even if only a crude, simplified manner. So, that means that truly novel arguments are probably just making shit up. The only truly acceptable, good argument one might not be aware of is may be the best phrasing of an old argument. The perfect polish on it. Quite frankly, all of those ancient turds have been polished quite enough and still lack luster. Hold out for the possibility, but just remind yourself that you shouldn’t have to hunt the good shit down, and given that you have probably covered a wide swath of apologia already, the probability of a good, killer, argument for god or religion lying out there is slim. Especially considering that the religious would have incentive to find this argument first and propagate it fast, far and wide.

(Please note: I say all of this, and yet I still can’t help myself from hunting down these legendary Good Arguments every so often. I know that we have well passed the threshold of reasonable doubt, and yet I still can’t help but give the benefit of doubt in a moment or two of weakness.)

While his AI squadmates shot down the intruder before anyone’s battlesuits took too much damage, what shocked Big Chilly was that for the first time in hundreds of playings, an enemy AI had taken it upon itself to circle around behind the rescue force and attack it from an unexpected direction.

But how could this happen? How could a lowly artificial intelligence surprise a lead programmer who was demonstrably omniscient and omnipotent in the AI’s world? How can the created do what the creator did not will?

While the “God as game designer” hypothesis might reasonably be described as literally making God in one’s own image, especially when it comes from a game designer, it does offer the potential of explaining the importance of obedience to God’s will as well as the seemingly arbitrary nature of what is in line with that will and what is not. If we are AIs in God’s laboratory, then we cannot expect to have any more understanding of His ultimate purpose for us than those AIs in Big Chilly’s war lab did.

This may be little more than over-caffeinated techno-speculation, but it is, I think, an exciting way to view the universe as well as providing a reasonable solution for those pesky problems of evil and ultimate purpose….It is a fundamentally optimistic perspective, because if this is only the 3D war lab, imagine what the real game in all its multi-dimensional glory must be like! Even if we are immaterial simulations, we are immaterial simulations with a genuine purpose and a future more radical than we can possibly imagine in front of us. Accepting the idea that we are not only the gods of the machine, but also the machines of God, gives us the wherewithal to face the prospect of death with enthusiastic anticipation instead of courage, resignation, or even terror.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of the novel arguments are inept metaphors, baldly asserted to be “how it really works”, insofar as that is convenient.

Those last few paragraphs of his are horrifying in their implications, because he also believes “Oh, and when you lose your last life, instead of being deleted off the server, you respawn with infinite health but in a lava lake. And the designer did this on purpose.”

It also shows how pathetic this guy is, though. Now I mostly feel sorry for him. Not so sorry that I wouldn’t kick his legs out from under him near a mud puddle of course.

Yeah, I know it’s not a random sample, but in the absence of any other information than the voting turnout and the split, all you can go on is the statistical test for confidence intervals for a proportion. If you want to claim that there was some other factor involved, e.g. that racists turned out in droves for the vote, then you’d better be able to provide some evidence other than “I’d like to think that every single non-voting member was against him”.

The person you’re remembering was called Vox Populi. I have no idea if they are the same person, but he used to spam the Livejournal atheist groups HARD, including having several alt accounts and running a mockery page, similar to the Slymepit. It took us about a year to gather enough evidence to finally get him banned. Good times. :/

After reading the links about Beale posted here, especially the rational wiki one, there are so many coincidences. Both of them are obsessed with:
– how atheists are irrational
– using words like “twit”
– handles involving the word “vox”
– how materialism is the source of all evil
– really weird/bad arguments against various scientific theories

I remember watching some of the forums he trolled and getting the feeling that he could be a sociopath (not that you can diagnose people on the internet). But there was definitely something scary about how he could manipulate other people into believing the most absurd things and then turn them into his army of trolls.

Oddly, Beale seems to have missed the part of “Western codes of civilised conduct” exemplified by various equal rights movements and legislations.

You mean the codes of conduct that part of “Western” civilization only adopted kicking and screaming after centuries of struggle by a good chunk of their own population plus the descendants of people they wronged?

rachelswirsky

some will have voted for Beale without even looking at the platform simply because they were voting against Steve Gould (who was seen as Scalzi’s pick).

Those people have only shown they’re willing to elect a monstrously racist asshat just to spite John Scalzi. Is that supposed to be encouraging?

Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support.

On behalf of the between 50% and 75% of my ancestors who were white and the 50% who were male, I am insulted by the implication that they were like Beale. A society of Beales would degenerate into Lord of the Flies like insanity extremely rapidly. And starve.

Beale doesn’t know much history, does he? It wasn’t white men who invented algebra and the concept of zero, built the pyramids, built the railroads of the US west, developed most of the interesting bits of US culture, revealed the working of cell cytosol, discovered radium and polnium, and saved the US from a second great depression. Just to mention a few things that come to my mind without any internet searching. Plus Jeminins is a much better writer than he is. She is obviously more competent then he is in their field.

You mean the codes of conduct that part of “Western” civilization only adopted kicking and screaming after centuries of struggle by a good chunk of their own population plus the descendants of people they wronged?

1: My (scare-quoted, you may note) use of the phrase “Western codes of civilised conduct” was a direct quote from VD’s own post, as linked in the edit at the end of the OP, here.

2: I specifically referred to the various civil rights movements which forced the change, and which VD seems to ignore when referencing said codes of conduct—the movements which did the struggling you refer to.

I get from your sarcastic tone that you feel I somehow glossed over or failed to note these facts.

I blame my Head Cold Of Doom for my earlier failure to make it clear that the Do Not Read These tumblr is a work of mockery directed at Theodore Beale in support of the writers whose work he has denigrated. Apologies.

Those people have only shown they’re willing to elect a monstrously racist asshat just to spite John Scalzi. Is that supposed to be encouraging?

Well, as I said, levels of information vary. Some of have shown that. Others have shown that they’re willing to elect an unknown quantity in order to spite Scalzi (and those who have worked with him in order to enact the goals that characterize his administration).

I think most people voting on low information to spite would assume that “unknown quantity” only very rarely — so rarely as not to factor — will turn out to be someone who opposes universal suffrage. (I wonder to what extent, I and others underestimate the number of people who share that view, but that’s ancillary.)

All that aside, as I said before, while the 10% statistic may not justify every claim that’s been made, it’s still useful for examining how power works and is used and into what percentage of people one can assume will assent to anything.

Creationist xians, by the way, can not distance themselves from Vox Day. Why? One of the writers for Creation Ministries International has written a long, bigoted screed against atheists where he uses Beale’s work quite a lot to support his case (read: ad-homs against us.

A truly sickening read, and you’ll see that Mariano relies on Vox a fair amount.

Voxy is now screaming OPPRESHUN because the Science Fiction Writers of America are calling him on his bullshit.

UPDATE 2: The Spitefully Fascist Writers of America are on the job! This post was resulted in the following email: “Your blog feed has been removed from the @SFWAauthors aggregator due to violating of the policies of this service, specifically: “Marking blog posts for inclusion that include threats or personal attacks or obvious trolling will also be grounds for removal.””

UPDATE 3: Now the SFWA moderators have, at least temporarily, wiped my comments off the SFWA Forum thread while leaving the attacks on me untouched. What a pity that 20x more people will read everything here instead. Keep this in mind when you’re trying to argue that there are no ideological gatekeepers in the SF/F publishing world. They desperately want to silence all disssent, and they’re tremendously frustrated that they don’t have the wherewithal.

Isaac Asimov was a notable humanist and liberal, Carl Sagan wrote good SF, Iain Banks, well we’ve seen the quotes from him on the currently latest thread today and you have those like Andre Norton*, Ursula Le Guin**, Anne McCaffrey*** and so on.

I love SF and read a wide range of it and whilst don’t think its necessarily a good idea to base your life in the here and now on SF set in future utopias; I do think SF enriches life and provides some interesting and definitely isn’t all libertarian although you get libertarians writing Sf just as you get liberals and even communists doing so.

* I’d highly recommend one of her novels which started with a struggling mother cat and moved onto struggling humans and a kind bear-like (?) alien race. Can’t recall the title or find it on my bookshelves though I thought I had a copy – just spent ages looking – but a childhood fave of mine.

Isaac Asimov was a notable humanist and liberal, Carl Sagan wrote good SF, Iain Banks, well we’ve seen the quotes from him on the currently latest thread today and you have those like Andre Norton*, Ursula Le Guin**, Anne McCaffrey*** and so on.

I love SF and read a wide range of it and whilst don’t think its necessarily a good idea to base your life in the here and now on SF set in future utopias; I do think SF enriches life and provides some interesting and definitely isn’t all libertarian although you get libertarians writing Sf just as you get liberals and even communists doing so.

Keep in mind I’m trying to say this in a nice tone as inflection doesn’t translate into print well.

1) I don’t think you’ve read what I write as 90% is genre media references
2) It was a crack on Libertarianism and it’s ties to Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged
3) As much as I like sci-fi, looking into the broader scope of it has shown me that any positive reputation as a genre it has is largely undeserved.

* I’d highly recommend one of her novels which started with a struggling mother cat and moved onto struggling humans and a kind bear-like (?) alien race. Can’t recall the title or find it on my bookshelves though I thought I had a copy – just spent ages looking – but a childhood fave of mine.

Found it on my bookshelf finally – Iron Cage Roc / Penguin books, 1974. Loved that novel as a kid and read and re-read that one many times.

@ 115. Ing :

Keep in mind I’m trying to say this in a nice tone as inflection doesn’t translate into print well.

True and thankyou for that.

1) Okay, I, well, I don’t quite understand what you are meaning in that sentence right now I’m afraid. I’ll think about that and sleep on it. I sometimes take a while to catch on.

2) Fair enough. I haven’t read those books and from what I gather I’m not overly keen to do so. (My books to read list is currently a lot longer than Id like to admit.) I am not a libertarian and no fan of Ayn Rand.* The only really libertarian SF writer that springs to my mind is Heinlein and while I enjoy may of his books I don’t always agree with what he has to say esp. his political philosophy.

3) Well, I absolutely love SF. I’ve always been an absolute bookworm and its a field I adore. So, well, let’s just say I strongly disagree with your conclusion there based on my personal experiences. I respect that you have a different perspective band experiences to mine. SF is, to me, about possibilities and thinking of what might be and a lot else as well. I’m not sure I can do the whole field justice or defend it especially given how I feel right now but I do suggest you reconsider based on the fact that really, SF is a whole diverse genre which is inclusive of every position on the political spectrum and which is certainly not, in my view anyhow, limited to the works of Rand and other libertarian authors. Your experience might be that those writers are a majority -but in my experience that’s not the case.

* On checking the spelling of Ayn Rand I found there’s another Anne Rand :

who was a member of the US Democratic party and a supporter of Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential bid and who sponsored a bill to make marijuana legal for patients with HIV-AIDS in 1995. Curious co-incidence and another new item learnt today.

The only really libertarian SF writer that springs to my mind is Heinlein and while I enjoy may of his books I don’t always agree with what he has to say esp. his political philosophy.

Also John Ringo, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Poul Anderson, Dan Simmons, and David Brin, and that’s just looking at my personal bookshelf. Then there’s L Neil Smith, who writes libertarian screeds thinly disguised as SF, F. Paul Wilson likewise although he’s better at it and mostly writes horror novels these days because there’s more money in it, Terry Goodkind, who tried to do The Fountainhead as fantasy instead of SF, and a whole bunch more of it besides. There’s loads more too whose names aren’t popping up in my mind right now; there’s a huge, huge vein of libertarianism in the SF community generally.

Those people have only shown they’re willing to elect a monstrously racist asshat just to spite John Scalzi. Is that supposed to be encouraging?

I cannot see how this is in any way encouraging or even defensible, as Rachel Swirsky valiantly attempts to do, especially when you read the “logic” underlying such a notion, as laid out by one William Barton in the SFWA forums:

My opinion of Beale the Candidate was simple enough. SFWA is being taken over by a cabal of sorts which, if it does take over, will the possess SFWA’s treasury. Once they own SFWA, we’ll never get it back. Electing Beale presidenyt would have stall the process, and Beale we could easily enough overthrow! Most of you geniuses didn’t listen (or didn’t undertand what I was talking about).